Sticks, stones, and bypassing: avoiding harm in spiritual and healing spaces (special post)

​NOTE: this is a piece I wrote for a Reiki mag. As expected, it wasn’t for them. They didn’t reject it; merely called it “low vibration,” because it focuses on what people are doing wrong. I don’t think that’s “low vibe”; I think that’s what accountability looks like. But what is frustrating is that the resubmission was invited using bypassing language. 

Imagine sitting with a doctor who has just given you some terrible news.

“Of course,” Doc says, peering over their glasses, “you brought this on yourself, you know. Tsk, tsk.”

Here you are, facing something truly scary, and the first thing that happens after the words land: your healthcare provider explains that this situation is entirely your fault. Consider the psychology of that moment, what might run through your brain: “I could have prevented this!” “This is because I’m a bad person!” “Oh if only I’d done X, Y, Z thing . . .” You’ve come to someone for healthcare, and you’ve suddenly discovered that you are the reason you’re about to go through something awful and terrifying—so on top of all else, you feel shame. What kind of bedside manner is this? Beyond that, it puts you—the patient—in the role not only of being responsible for dealing with this new and awful thing, but bearing the responsibility for having failed yourself.

​No one wants to be treated this way, regardless of whether we’re getting bad news. When we seek care, it’s usually helpful if blame doesn’t enter the chat quite yet. Everyone deserves a little humanity. Everyone deserves a little, well, . . . care.
                 
Which is why those of us in complimentary and spiritual work benefit from considering the impacts our personal cosmologies and the words we give them on our clients. Because, without realizing it, we may be having the same impact as the doctor in our imagined story. Common spiritual axioms can leave people feeling shame and can even re-trigger trauma when they’re experienced out of context.
                 
To explore how this happens, let’s choose the the law of attraction as an example—but consider that this applies to any and all ancient truisms outside their cultural context. To level set, let’s simplify this larger concept the way it’s often described casually: what you resist persists. Whatever you focus on, think about, etc., is what you draw to you—regardless of whether you want it or not. So if you think about getting sick a lot, you draw sickness to you. There are other manifestations of this “law,” but this is just an example; there are many similar and linked concepts we could use. 
                 
Now, how could talking about this harm a client?

Consider: when we say to a client, “What you resist persists,” we are in fact saying to that client, “You are sick because you think about sickness.” That may not be what we mean, or maybe it’s exactly what we mean—but it’s what many, many people are going to receive. We are telling people of global majority, “You experience racism because you think about racism.” We are telling people who have experienced assault, “You were assaulted because you think about assault.” You may not accept my theory, but it doesn’t matter whether you do or not. We don’t control how our words are received. I assume your intent is not to make anyone feel that way, of course. Because, no, the law of attraction does not mean that we bring racism (or queerphobia or other societal ills) upon ourselves by thinking about it. Racism exists because of society, not because of the individual mindset of people within communities who experience racist systems. Many of us tend to focus on the intent of our words. As practitioners of Reiki and other spiritual/healing arts, it is essential that we learn to consider the impact of our words, too—and that, perhaps, primarily.
                 
We come up against an issue: a truism may be, well, true--but the recitation of that truism can also send a very wrong, very dangerous message to a client. How are we to talk about our cosmology in spiritual practice if we’re forced to consider the impact of every word we choose? How are we to explain what we do and how we think about what we do if we have to “walk on egg shells?”
                 
Fair questions, all. I invite us to consider, first, this isn’t about walking on egg shells. It’s about client-centricity, student-centricity, extra (as in other or outside) centricity. But before we get to what I mean by extra-centricity, let’s pause to consider the world—both our (western) world today, and the those from which many of the truisms we love emerged. Because these worlds are in fact worlds apart. The ancient texts, the great lessons and thinkers of the foundational concepts of human spirituality and knowledge, emerged in a pre-capitalist, pre-industrialized, pre-colonial (usually), pre-individualistic landscape. Tribalism and conflict always existed, but the scale at which division is mass marketed and weaponized today is a modern invention. We simply do not live in the same environments from which many ancient spiritualities emerged. And when communal (rather than individualistic) societies declare that we attract what we focus on, it can be helpful to consider what that means to a community. The operative words becomes the pronouns: we attract what we focus on. The collective. Because, of course, survival was collective.
                 
Fortune (or not) was collective. Sickness for one person impacted the collective. Proximity meant likely spread, but even beyond that communal groups rely on each other and when one member of the community can’t contribute, the entire community suffers. It is easier to think in terms of laws of attraction when we recall that we are part of a collective and that concepts like this emerged (usually) from the group. This means that saying, “we attract what we think about,” or “what we resist persists” lacked any implication of blame. There was a collective responsibility to participate in the success or failure of that collective. (That’s still true, incidentally, and it’s one reason Reiki is so powerful. In healing ourselves and others, Reiki makes it more possible for ourselves and others to participate in the collective healing of this planet.)
                 
Reiki’s own homeland isn’t, or wasn’t, particularly individualistic. The Japan of Reiki’s origins held strong family connections, collective ties, and cared deeply for elders and those of rank. A common implication in stories of Dr. Hayashi’s death may have been an honor-based choice on behalf of his family. True for him or not, this was a part of Japan’s society in Reiki’s foundational days. This is a far cry from modern US culture, which collectively can agree on very little and resents both age and rank. Most of us cannot fathom the act of ending one’s life to protect the honor of our loved ones. We don’t have that cultural context, so we can’t parse it. When Mrs. Takata made alternations to Reiki’s foundational structures, it’s because she knew the difference between Japanese and American societies, and she knew that Americans are impatient—and though we hate age and rank, we love titles and importance (similar, but different: rank is earned or bestowed; titles and import can be purchased). She had to alter Reiki so that it would make sense to the American mind, knowing Americans would be her students.
                 
Today, though, we  tend not to consider the cultural differences between concepts from our spiritual paths and the way those sound in an individualistic society that almost insists on, thrives on, inequities. “What you resist persists” can be an incredibly cruel thing to say to someone who has much to resist from systems of oppression to trauma and chronic mental, emotional, or physical health issues. Even if it’s true that we, at the individual level, bring toward us what we focus on, how helpful are those words to someone in the throes of pain?
                 
Not very. In fact, as we’ve seen, that can negate the realities of systems a client has no control over and health that, though it may be their own doing, cannot simply be fixed by changing their way of thinking. Nor, frankly, can many people simply just change the way they think. Our viewpoints, including pessimistic ones, are formed both by our education (those who guard us is childhood program how we’ll react to setbacks, upsets, and roadblocks) and how we’re treated by people of influence in our lives: peers, teachers, doctors, leaders and politicians, and, increasingly, social media personalities and celebrities. We do change our thinking, but slowly. (And Reiki does help with that!) One may make the argument that we choose the life we live before coming into it, but since we have no way of adjusting that choice once we’re in the midst of it, how helpful is that to the kid who keeps getting chased by the cops for walking through his own neighborhood?
                 
It’s not. In fact, it hurts.
                 
Reiki can’t harm, but practitioners have to consider if we can.
                 
​There’s nothing wrong with living by concepts such as the law of attraction. And they may will be real and true and helpful to consider. But when discussing them with people whose lives, histories, and experiences we don’t know, it’s wise to consider what can be implied by our words, even without our meaning it. We have to consider if we’re accidentally telling a person with trauma that the abuse, oppression, or disease they’re experiencing is their fault--and if we’re somehow comfortable saying that, are we certain that it’s helpful?
                 
I’m a person who lives with anxiety, depression, and ADHD (a real thing that, sadly, sounds like an excuse, these days—unless you have it). I also happen to be an adult recovering from the trauma of extreme childhood bullying (another term that sounds infantile, unless you’ve experienced what it can do to your sense of self). In my mid-forties, if you tell me that I caused any of those things, especially the bullying, because that’s what I focused on? There’s a series of psychological triggers that get flipped igniting years of begging the adults in my life to stop my peers from emotionally and (sometimes) physically torturing me. I didn’t create that reality. My peers did, and my teachers allowed it. I would have loved to think less about bullying. I wasn’t allowed to by my entire existence from the age of about third grade through my junior year of high school.
                 
My childhood environment was created collectively. And today we create and sustain our society every day. We do so by accepting, tacitly or explicitly, societal norms; we do it by ignoring or challenging problematic behaviors; we do that by considering the impact of the words we use, or not—by thoughtfully considering that, in fact, words, like sticks and stones, can inflict pain when used carelessly.
                 
Listening to The Reiki Radio Podcast recently, I heard host Yolanda say that the distance reiki symbol “dissolves the illusion of separateness.” I got chills when I heard that; it’s such a beautiful turn of phrase. And I’ve found this to be true. My Reiki experience, in a short while, has changed me dramatically. And I understand, as a result of Reiki, how not only the distance symbol but the entire system dissolves the illusion of separateness. We are together, we are one, and so there’s something to be said about being intentional about the way we talk to one another, especially in healing environments, because when we hurt or trigger someone else—intentionally or not—we hurt ourselves.
                 
There’s a movement toward trauma-informed care in alt spaces. The central idea, as I understand it, is to meet people assuming they may have unresolved trauma that we might ignite. No egg shell-walking, but maintaining an eye on avoiding the triggering of someone’s anxiety or fight-or-flight responses. We can’t know what everyone’s triggers are, so by selecting our language thoughtfully as we get to know someone new (or as we build a new audience), we improve the likelihood that we won’t trigger people. It is imperfect, but it is also thoughtful.
                 
Earlier I used the term extra-centricity, and promised I’d return to it. I mentioned that extra, in this case, means outward. This means we center what’s outside of us, and in this case the potential for our spiritual tenets to cause harm when taken out of context. This means knowing that, unless we are thoughtfully contextualizing for people, we cannot assume they know what we mean and that our intended meaning will translate perfectly. This can look like saying, “I’m a great believer in the law of attraction, which means the way that we bring toward us what we give our energy to. This doesn’t mean that every bad thing that happens to us is caused by our actions, but the focus of our attention means we’re going to notice certain things—and we’re going to notice our unhappiness most, if that’s what we tend to think about most. I’m not speaking in terms of societal problems, but if we’re prone to worrying about disease—we’ll feel dis-eased more often.”
                 
Now, what if you believe that, in fact, every bad thing that happens to us is our fault and we do choose the life we’re living—complete with systems of racism, bullying, disability, poverty, and the like—well, I’m not here to tell you that your lived experience of spirit is inaccurate. But I invite you to think of it this way: how much healing can come to a person whose providers begin sessions by creating a deep sense of shame within? How much healing can arrive between a healer who makes people feel unsafe—however nobly—and a person who feels unsafe with that healer? (This, by the way, is assuming the person recognizes they feel that way. Many people have gotten so used to feelings of shame that they feel safer in that state because it’s familiar. That doesn’t mean shame is harming them any less.) No one says you have to change what you believe. Simply be considerate in your exploration of them.
                 
I followed Reiki’s call because it is so divorced from the healer’s ego, but as healers we can still find ways of inserting our egos into the process. Assuming that our spiritual tenets, common as they might be, will make sense to clients, students, listeners or readers of our work, etc., is egotistical because it centers our spiritual beliefs over the potential impacts of sharing those without providing clear context. And when we’re excited about our spiritual revelations, we want to share them. Of course we do! In the weeks after my Reiki II, I became insufferably evangelical with my friends about its life-changing power. We must temper excitement with care, though. Reiki should be a place for people to experience safety. So, in fact, should spirituality. Let us intend to be thoughtful about what we say and how we say it.
                 
​We repeat the Reiki tenets—to not anger or worry, to experience gratitude and diligence, and to offer compassion to ourselves and others. If we take these to be true, than consider the compassion of thoughtful discussion of out-of-context spirituality. That, after all, is what we promise Reiki every time we practice. We should practice what we promise. It will take us closer to our goals—and our clients’ goals, too.
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Tom Benjamin is a recent Reiki II grad, and a tarot reader and teacher. His book, The Modern Fortune Teller’s Field Guide, arrives in October 2025 from Crossed Crow Press. Tombenjamintarot.com @tombenjamintarot on Instagram.